Bishop Jake Owensby | Reflections on the Teche

Posts Tagged ‘Bishop Jake Owensby’

A Resurrection Shaped Life by Jake Owensby

Posted in Books, Spiritual Growth, tagged A Resurrection Shaped Life, Bishop Jake Owensby on January 7, 2019| Leave a Comment »

Published by Abingdon Press

When I first met Jake Owensby, he was being consecrated as the fourth Bishop of the Western Louisiana Diocese of the Episcopal Church in 2012. My first impression of him was presence. It was a brief exchange, but I felt he was fully present and aware of me.

In his new book A Resurrection Shaped Life, Bishop Jake is fully present. He reveals himself in true reality while showing us how to live with the realities through a relationship with Jesus.

When we repent, we admit that the sorrows, the losses, the wounds, the betrayals, and the regrets of our past have made us into someone we don’t want to be anymore. We die to that self and entrust ourselves to Jesus. From those shattered places in our lives, Christ brings new life; repentance is the beginning of our resurrection.

Reading Bishop Jake’s book was like being present with him, not in the way listening to a sermon would, but like sitting next to him listening and learning how to be a Christian in today’s world. He accentuates Jesus’s plan for the world, a world of resurrection, in which love displaces fear, “where generosity eliminates deprivation and respect guards the dignity of all.”

Bishop Jake reminds us of who Jesus really is: committed to healing in the world. Jesus suffered. We suffer. God does not take away the pain or the suffering; however, through Jesus, we know that suffering is endured out of love and eventually leads to healing. When we lead a resurrection-shaped life, we live in compassion with imagination and hope.

Jesus changes our mind about God. In Jesus, we see who we truly are as humans. We are the beloved, not the blameworthy…we slowly begin to exchange our habit of blaming others for the habit of compassion.

Barbara Brown Taylor reminds un that new life starts in the dark. We must go through Good Friday to get to Easter. A Resurrection Shaped Life guides you through the darkness, by wading next to you and showing you the star.

I suggest following Bishop Jake’s blog: Looking for God in the Messy Places.

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Spiritual Journey: One Little Word 2019

Posted in Gratitude, Spiritual Growth, Writing, tagged Bishop Jake Owensby, One Little Word on January 3, 2019| 7 Comments »

Spiritual Journey is gathering today at Ruth’s blog. We are writing about our chosen words for 2019.

Choosing a one little word is something I start thinking about weeks before the year’s end. For me it becomes a process of listening to the universe. This year my thoughts started around Thanksgiving. The first word I considered was Compassion.

A compassionate life is something to aspire to. I recently read Bishop Jake Owensby’s latest book A Resurrection Shaped Life.

“By God’s grace, a new life–what I’m calling a resurrection-shaped life–emerges from suffering and sorrow. One way in which that new life emerges is in our unguarded engagement with the suffering of others.” (21)

Caring so deeply that we stand beside and hold hands with suffering is what Jesus calls us to; however, the more I thought about this word, the more unworthy I felt. I don’t want to choose a word that leads me to despair, that feeling of not meeting up with my own expectations.

Another word I considered was Mindfulness. I love practicing yoga and bringing meditation into my day. I’ve not made time for this since school started, so perhaps if I gave myself the word mindfulness, I would get back to these spirit-filled activities. And being in touch with my spiritual center would also lead me to compassion.

These words are still an integral part of my thinking. I meditated the other day and heard another word, Blessed. Ah, yes. That’s it. I am blessed and when I feel blessed, I can bless others. But the dictionary definition of blessed is “made holy; consecrated.” This definition makes me feel I am proclaiming something rather than working toward a better me.

In searching for synonyms of compassion, I found a perfect word, one I can wrap my head around, one that is not a claim or full of unlimited expectation. Simple and sincere…

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NPM #4: Dry Bones

Posted in Poetry, Slice of Life, Writing, tagged Bishop Jake Owensby, Spiritual poetry, student acrostic poetry on April 4, 2017| 10 Comments »

Join the Two Writing Teachers blog for the Slice of Life Challenge.

National Poetry Month 2017

For the month of April, I have committed to writing a poem each day. I am not following any stricter rule than that one. Others in the poetry blogging community are doing themed poems. You can see everything that’s going on at Jama’s Alphabet Soup.

On Monday, my young student Jacob wrote an acrostic poem on the word faith. He was surprised by his own wisdom. I told him that I think there is a whirl of ideas in the universe and he was open for it.

Finding
An
Invitation
to
Hope

Thinking about Jacob’s inspiring poem and the ideas from the universe, I felt a pull to write a found poem from Bishop Jake’s blog post from Sunday. Jake Owensby is the Bishop of the Western Louisiana Episcopal Diocese. He writes beautifully at Looking for God in Messy Places about how to live a life of love and hope. His post this week “Dry Bones and Living Flesh” inspired this poem.

Dry Bones

uprooted
nothing familiar
fleeing home
to stay alive
they leave behind
bones

Ezekiel had a vision
of those very dry bones.
The victors leave
the dead in an open grave,
a goldmine
of artifacts.

This was personal.
The baker’s daughter
he knew by her fragrance of yeast,
the grandmother rocking her grandchild,
the old stooped mason.

War is always the same.
Death, senseless, helpless
“collateral damage” No, this was personal-
husbands, wives, siblings, grandchildren.

Homes left in ruins,
People without community,
Dry bones
watered with survivor’s tears.

God takes these bones
clothes them
gives them breath.
God promises
through us
to be a new home
for the exiled.
Hear the call.

–Margaret Simon

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Celebrate a Holy Mess

Posted in Celebration Saturday, Spiritual Growth, Writing, tagged Bishop Jake Owensby, haiga, John Gibson, moon haiku, Pelican Anglican on December 21, 2013| 8 Comments »

Morning Light, photo by John Gibson

I temporarily forgot it was Saturday, Celebration Saturday. I was only thinking about the break. Whew! Here it is, two weeks off! I scheduled a facial this morning using a gift card my husband gave me for my birthday in August. I am Celebrating me today!

Celebrate imperfection and embrace holiness: Bishop Jake’s message touched me this morning. He always has some wonderful wisdom to offer. Today he tells us that we are not called to be perfect. We are born imperfect, and we will always be that way. This week my daughter, Martha, is home from Chicago. Celebrating her! She went to the eye doctor for the first time in probably more than 10 years. (Pass the guilt knife over.) She discovered not only that she is far-sighted like her mother, she also has a congenital defect in her optic nerve. The defect, Thank God, is harmless. Her amazing blue eyes are not perfect, but they are still lovely.

I spend a lot of time trying to be perfect. I would guess many of us do. It was refreshing to hear that I am not perfect and never will be. However, I am holy. This comes with a huge responsibility. To fully be holy, I need to accept others with open arms. I need to connect daily. I need to love fully. For more inspiration, read Pelican Anglican.

God did not make us to be perfect. He made us to be holy, to live into his image. God is love, and so love is the point of human life. And just in case you haven’t noticed, love is messy. God didn’t come to clean up the mess. He came to make it holy. To make it the holy mess he had in mind in the first place.
–Bishop Jake Owensby

Celebrating connections: I posted a full moon photo on Wednesday. My father posted one too, from his home in Mississippi. I wrote a haiku and have placed it over his photo to create a haiga. I learned about haiga from my Poetry Friday friend, Diane Mayr. She posted window haiga this week. Mine is a moon haiga.